and all these mistakes you've made
by weloveuntilwedie
Summary: "No," she states desperately, shaking her head lightly, before barely whispering, not able to stop herself from making him hate her, "No. I was pregnant this - this year. I went to the hospital and then - then I wasn't anymore." Puck/Quinn, could be considered headcanon, set in the future


"_but you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable and life's like an hourglass glued to the table, _

_no one can find the rewind button now."_

x

She can't do it again. She can't go through it again, not now. Not now when her life is finally working out. She just started working at a huge company, she finally made nice with her father and she's learning who she is and what she wants and she's just twenty-three. She can't do this. She couldn't do it the first time and she can't do it now.

It had felt good - his body pressing down on hers softly like he was afraid she might disappear if he didn't grasp onto her, his lips claiming her body like it was his forever to keep, his fingertips grazing her skin like she could break any minute - it hadn't been like the first time at all.

She wasn't drunk even if she liked to pretend she was, she wasn't ignorant to what was going on and what was going to happen and what the risks were (losing her heart) and she should've known it wasn't just a hook-up either.

When you've gone through as much as they have, nothing is just what it seems. It's difficult and messy and there are strings attached to everything. They're attached, tethered and when she moves, he moves and when he moves, she tries to cut herself loose.

She_ can't_ be this girl again. So she won't be.

x

There's a heavy feeling in her chest every time she inhales, like somebody up there is trying to taunt her, to remind her of exactly what she's about to do.

She had thought about calling Rachel or Mercedes and for a second she even considered Santana but in the end it still felt like she was murdering a tiny piece of herself and she couldn't - she couldn't have any witnesses of that.

They all stare at her - the others. They're judging her, they're reading her like a book but the problem with that is that you don't know what happened before the first chapter. They all just see what they want to see. A pretty girl that was dumb and naive enough to make a mistake. As if they're any better than her.

She winds her necklace around her finger, the cold metal of the cross almost burning her skin. She pretends to read a women's magazine but her vision is blurry - not with tears - but with memories she doesn't want. Her hand lands on her stomach, there's nothing there yet not even a small bump - nothing to prove that it existed.

She's never felt so alone.

x

He calls her because they're friends now and they're adults and they've learned to let go (of the past, of each other) and she almost tells him.

She almost does but he sounds so happy, telling her about his job in the army and how he finished writing his first song with Finn that day and and how he's happy that both their lives finally reached their full potential.

She asks him, though, because she knows from her own experience that when you're absolutely not - you're the best at covering it up.

"Are you happy?"

"Yeah, sure. What about you, Q?"

"Yes."

(_except I gave away the baby you wanted and I murdered the one you never even knew about_)

She wonders if she'll ever be.

x

He finds out a few months later because just like they always wind up together no matter what (tangled and messy and good when it should be bad) - her darkest secrets always come out.

Her back is pressed against the wall of Tina's apartment as she closes her eyes - finishing her fourth drink. It's just a reunion party like they do every two years or so, but she's not the girl she was back in glee club all those years ago.

(_she's cold and heartless and a murder_)

Her skin is clammy from the heat and the material of her sundress is sticking to her back and she wants so badly to just go home and crawl into her bed and forget about all of them.

He finds her though, like he always does and he chuckles tells her she needs some air (she does, she hasn't been able to breathe since she left the hospital).

"You smell like alcohol," he tells her as he lets go of her hand. They're outside, on Tina's balcony, and it's cold, especially for a summer night.

He offers her his jacket but she pushes his hands away. She swallows hard, putting her sticky hair behind her ear.

"I was pregnant."

"I know, I was there, remember?" He doesn't understand and he shouldn't have to, thinks she's just drunk talking and she wishes she was. He smiles, one of those smiles that used to make her knees go weak and her stomach erupt in butterflies but now it just makes her feel sick and sorry she ever touched him - she should've left him alone. He could have been great without her.

"No," she states desperately, shaking her head lightly, before barely whispering, not able to stop herself from making him hate her, "No. I was pregnant this - this year. I went to the hospital and then - then I wasn't anymore."

His smile fades, the realisation settling in his eyes and he doesn't yell or grab her shoulders and shake her roughly or asks her anything (_why did you do this, Quinn, why do you keep killing the things you love most?_) - like she deserves, like she wants him to do.

He just... turns around and leaves (he abandons her like she abandoned him over and over and over).

x

She's going through the motions until Rachel calls her up - first gushing about her and Finn's wedding until she mentions something like _he's actually with Noah right now, poor boy got dishonorably discharged _before she goes onto the next topic of gossip.

Just like that. Like it isn't her fault and she guesses in Rachel's eyes it isn't but if she knew - oh, if she knew she would hate her at least half as much as she hates herself. She'd be disgusted, too.

Her heart is pounding so loud she can't even hear Rachel so she just hangs up. She hangs up and lays down on her bed and tries to feel like she's not drowning.

Later, when she has thrown up about five times and hasn't slept in three days, she hears the details.

Dishonorably discharged because he drunkenly took his anger out on one of his teammates like he had wanted to do to her. Instead he ended up screwing up his own life because that's what she does to people (_ruin their lives, make them sorry they ever met her_).

She wants to throw up again (_she's disgusting, disgusting, disgusting_), and when it doesn't happen - she just cries.

x

She goes back to Lima for a month or two because she needs a break of pretending like everything's fine.

She sees him at the supermarket and almost drops the milk her mother had wanted her to pick up. He looks like her (a hollow shell of himself pretending that going through the motions is enough to want to make it to the next day) and she notices the beer and the whiskey on the counter. She hides behind the shelf with cereal and closes her eyes until she doesn't hear his voice anymore.

Before she leaves she grabs a bottle of alcohol herself, not bothering to bring the milk home.

(_she destroyed him, she destroyed his chance of not becoming a Lima loser, she destroyed him_)

x

At least when she sees him at Kurt's birthday party he looks okay - he doesn't look at her, not once - but he looks okay from afar.

(But she did, too, and she wasn't.)

He's broken but when he smiles (his beautiful, beautiful smile that she regrets not appreciating when it was still real) she sees glimpses of when he was still whole. She broke him and she knows like no other that once you've been broke, once you're in tiny, tiny pieces scattered all over - you can try to fix it, try to glue yourself back together but it's never a clean break - it'll never fit perfectly together again.

She hears the whispers from her friends, about how Puck hasn't been sober since... _her_. Since she happened.

She wants to hold him, and heal him and she wants him to tell her _it'll be fine_ because a lot of days, she finds herself believing the opposite. She wants him to look at her and say _it's okay_ and then maybe she'll finally be able to be free (of her mistakes and the pain and the guilt) and to breathe.

She wants to, so desperately, to be the person she was before - the person he touched that night and loved so fearlessly and looked at like she was the best thing that ever happened to him.

(but she can't escape it)

x

It's past Christmas, past the one year mark of her night with Puck, but just before - new year's eve and the erasement of that night.

She sits down at a small bar downtown, tired of dealing with her mother but a good tired (not a world-weary tired) and she figures that maybe she's finally a little okay again. She's not great or sad but something in between and that's all she ever wanted.

He's there, and he doesn't look away, instead walks over towards her.

She does look away and doesn't look up, just stirs her coffee with her spoon over and over until she gets a little dizzy.

He doesn't say anything either, just brushes her arm with his when he sits down on the barstool right next to hers.

"_I'm sorry_," she wants to say but she doesn't. She opens her mouth, ready to say it, but it doesn't come out.

"Me too," he answers anyway, like he knows exactly what she wants (needs).

This just hasn't been her year and it hasn't been his either and her mistake wasn't making the same mistake twice, it was trying to make the mistake go away instead of just dealing with it.

She knows that now and maybe with time she can learn to accept what she did - like she learned to accept that she'll never be a hundred percent happy - but neither will anyone else. She just hopes he can accept it, too - what she did - because she knows she's never been happier than when she's with him (and she hopes she didn't permanently ruin that him because for _that_, she could never forgive herself).

He orders a coke and she looks up at him and smiles, carefully, but it's a smile. He smiles back.

x

"_there's a light at each end of this tunnel you shout cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out."_

x

**...story is based on the song 2 a.m. breathe by anna nalick - i do not own anything - a review would mean a lot...**


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